Ending Hunger in America, 2014 Hunger Report Full Report | Page 74
America’s Poverty-Wage Workers
America’s poverty-wage workforce is predominantly female.13 See Figure 2.2. While plenty
of men also get stuck in poverty-wage jobs, they have more pathways for escape. The female
workforce is concentrated in industries that historically pay less than those dominated by
men—low-wage work in restaurants, retail sales, cleaning, and particularly care of children
and elders,14 in contrast to sectors such as construction and manufacturing.15 Women are 94
percent of the country’s childcare workforce and 88 percent of the home health care aides
who care for elderly and disabled
people.16 Both occupations have a
Figure 2.2 Women’s Share of Low-Wage and Overall Workforces
median wage of about $20,000 a
year.17
80%
In 2011, U.S. women who worked
70
full-time, year-round earned 77
Low-wage Workforce
60
cents for every dollar earned by
Overall Workforce
men.18 While differences in educa50
tion and training account for some
40
of the wage gap, much more is due
30
to gender discrimination. Race is a
compounding factor—hunger is far
20
more widespread among racial and
10
ethnic minorities. African American and Hispanic women earn just
0
Immigrant
Women
White, nonAfrican-American Hispanic Women Asian, Hawaiian,
83 percent and 71 percent, respecWomen
Hispanic Women
Women
or Pacific
Islander Women
tively, of what white women earn.19
For an African American woman
Source: National Women’s Law Center (2013). Analysis of 2012 Current Population Survey
working full time, the gender wage
and Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The low-wage workforce is defined here as the 10 largest
detailed low-wage occupations with median wages of less than $10.10 per hour.
gap costs her the equivalent of
118 weeks of food per year, and a
20 Latinas who are legal immigrants and have been in
Latina loses the equivalent of 154 weeks.
the United States for less than five years are not able to receive SNAP benefits. No legal immigrants, male or female, are eligible for SNAP benefits before they have been in the country for
five years, a policy that makes little sense in light of setting a goal to end hunger.
Women are overrepresented in minimum wage jobs.21 One of the myths about the minimum wage is that most of the earners are teenagers22—but in reality, 80 percent are age 20 or
older.23 Two-thirds of restaurant workers who earn the “tipped minimum wage” (an exemption
to minimum wage laws on the grounds that workers can make up the difference in tips) of only
$2.13 an hour are women.24 See Box 2.1 on page 66. They are women like Claudia Muñoz, an
immigrant from Mexico who supported herself for years by working in restaurants while she
attended college in Texas. She survived mostly from the $30 to $40 a day she collected in tips.
Muñoz works for the Restaurant Opportunities Center, an advocacy organization whose focus
is raising wages and improving working conditions for all U.S. restaurant workers. “There
were times when I wouldn’t eat all day,” she recalls. Employees at one restaurant whe ?H ?B????Y ?\?H ??YY ?]HYX[ ?? \ ?
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